“Nah,” Ace cuts in, making my eyes jump up to him.
He’s too busy thumbing through his wallet to notice the panicked expression on my face. Maybe he’s finally feeling the regret he should’ve felt after dinner the other night.
“We’ll be busy in the next couple of weeks, but I’ll let you know when to expect us, Sun.”
A quiet sigh escapes my lips.
I don’t even care that I don’t know what he’s talking about. I just know we’ll be together again and he still doesn’t have any regrets.
When we walk outside to the parking lot, my eyes won’t stop grazing the back of his calves and the Jordans on his feet. The arrow on my like-o-meter doesn’t exist anymore. It’s malfunctioning and flying off the scale because my pussy is confused, like Mama says Chelsea’s is:“She need to go find a nice preacher’s kid and stop all this Marcus nonsense. Her lil’ pussy is hot and confused.”
I know that she means Marcus is too old for Chelsea. He’s faster than she is, like Ace is for me, but Ace has this way of making me think I can catch up to him.
The sun beats down on my face. I’m full of hives, my panties are a mess, and my belly aches for one more taste of Ace before we pick up Mama.
As soon as he closes me inside and slides back behind the steering wheel, I snatch his cup from the cupholder and wrap my lips around the edge where I think his lips may have been last. The Veuve splashes against my tongue while he grips the back of my headrest, letting out a quiet laugh as he pulls out of the parking spot.
“Manis and pedis work up Lourdes’ appetite and make her think she can do shit without my permission.” He smirks. “Now the kid’s defiant. That’s cool. I know how to fix that, too.”
Those words are as good asthe look. They both send my hives into overdrive and I think I fucked up that night I opened my mouth for him in our driveway.
CHAPTERNINE
Lourdes
Mama didn’t lose all her hair at once.
We measured the time it took for her to go bald by chemotherapy infusions. On the morning of her first infusion I could still slick her hair into a bun, the night after her fourth one her edges went, and by the time her sixth one rolled around, the ziplock bag under her bathroom sink had an Afro in it.
Granny told us not to throw it in the trash because anybody could get ahold of it, so now it’s just a big ole’ lump of black staring at me every time I open her cabinet to look for a bonnet. She says she’s going to burn it when she comes back to visit from Lake Charles, but Mama thinks if we keep it, it’ll trick her hair follicles into working again. Now, it looks like midnight colored cotton and I don’t know how much longer I can look at it.
“Get Naomi!” Mama yells from her bed.
I smile, pushing the plastic bag to the side and snatching Naomi from the back corner of the cabinet.
Naomi ain’t nothing but a twenty dollar Shake-n-go I got from the hair store last month with Bryson, but Mama swore it was worthy of a name. Her strands are silky and I rake my fingers through them while putting on my best strut for Mama because she’s stuck again today. It’s a thing now.
Dr. Evanston told Marcus it was a “cognitive dysfunction due to the treatment of her diagnosis” when he called to complain about it, but none of us know what the fuck that even means. He wouldn’t even tell us how she got that neuropathy Ace was talking about. He just prescribed more medicine we can’t pronounce.
“Hey now!” Mama claps when I round the corner. “You... better... walk, girl!”
Her words struggle to come out between coughs while I ignore the cold bacon sitting on her nightstand. It’s been there since this morning.
I giggle. “We gotta show Twitter this one.”
“Okay! You better tell them Tweety birds that your Mama still got it.”
I crawl into her unmade bed and plop it on her head as soon as she leans down. Even underneath her dim bedroom light, the strands shine. She flings her head back and a burn creeps up the back of my throat, but I ignore it and push my camera in her face.
“Pose for the camera...” I smash my finger against the phone while darting my eyes between the screen and her in real life.
It’s a constant battle.
“Bet you didn’t know I used to model, did you?” She tilts her head with a sly wink.
“Mama, being an extra in a Slim Thug video don’t count as modeling.”
She wheezes out a mixture of a cough and a laugh while I do the one thing that keeps me from letting that burn take over and invade my mouth when I’m stuck in the house for days at a time: I tweet.
